


La Belle Assemble

by AMarguerite



Series: An Ever-Fixed Mark [6]
Category: Pride and Prejudice & Related Fandoms, Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: F/M, Napoleonic Wars, Regency Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-03-02 00:08:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13306227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/pseuds/AMarguerite
Summary: A collection of drabbles, ficlets, and outtakes from 'A Dalliance with the Duke,' which previously lived in the comment section and on tumblr, now in one place for your reading convenience!





	1. In which the Duchess of Wellington is not a patroness of the arts

**Author's Note:**

> This comes as a request from run-you-clever-boy on tumblr: "For the Sequel Meme, can you do one to Dalliance with the Duke? Like a slice of life kind of thing? With fluff and happiness but anything else is up to you!!!" It's based on this Hyde Park Statue of Achilles in honor of Wellington (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellington_Monument,_London), plus this fabulous political cartoon (http://bit.ly/2qE2uKT).

When the ladies of London had come to Elizabeth, making noises about building a statue in her husband’s honor, she did not really pay much attention. Her youngest daughter, Lady Marjorie Wellesley, was beginning to walk, and Elizabeth was constantly jumping from her seat to keep her daughter from banging her head against table corners or the arms of chairs, or from tumbling headlong into the fireplace. It had, in retrospect, been a bad idea to give the nurse the entire week off. Arthur had really proved his worth in taking the boys and their eldest daughter, little Lady Beatrice, to the Tower, to observe the lions get their monthly washing, but Marjorie was too young for so extended an outing, and Elizabeth herself still getting over a winter cold. They had remained home, which, in turn, meant being at home to visitors. 

She listened but with half an ear as one lady said, “We were thinking a statue of Achilles, by Richard Westmacott, done on classical lines, in bronze– from cannons your husband’s army seized– and at no cost to the tax payer! It would be totally funded by private contributions.”

Elizabeth jumped up and scooped up her daughter before she dove into the coal scuttle. “Little Miss, mind yourself!” she said, but gave the lie to this scold by kissing her daughter’s chubby little fist. Elizabeth turned her attention to the ladies assembled and, begging their pardon, said that she had no objection to Achilles, for indeed, he had been one of her favorite heroes since childhood. And, any road, having been very famously painted as Athena, she could have no objection to any classical theme.

Unfortunately, she was misunderstood.

These ladies had taken her comments to mean that Achilles should be based on her husband.

Great was Elizabeth’s astonishment and mortification when she and her husband called upon the sculptor to see the work in progress.

“Ha,” said Arthur, presumably to gain time.

“What do you think, sir? The ladies of London so wished to honor you.”

“I can honestly say that I am speechless.”

Elizabeth stared up at the colossal nude with recognizably her husband’s profile, and could only think to say, “Well, sir, it ah….”

“A modern hero for a modern Britain,” said the sculptor, beaming with pride.

“I suppose you will be clothing me in more than merely glory later on,” said Arthur, dryly. “As it is, the cold of standing outdoors seems to have preemptively effected me.”

Elizabeth, crimson as the crossbars of a Union Jack, stared fixedly at what she found to be the most objectionable part of the statue. “Mr. Westmacott, you really cannot have an outdoor statue of my husband in– in such an attitude!”

“It is in direct copy of the ancients.“

“Oh yes, but we live in the modern era of printing presses and political cartoonists,” said Elizabeth. “No, no, sir, I am sorry, but you cannot set up a statue like this in Hyde Park. I can already see the cartoons: the Ladies of London invite all to inspect the Duke of Wellington’s cannon! The Duchess of Wellington makes public use of her husband’s artillery!”

“Come now, my dear,” said Arthur, vastly amused. “You know my artillery has been your exclusive property these five years and more.”

“That does not mean I wish everyone to see it! And it’s not even proportionally–” She got too embarrassed to continue and hid her hot face in her hands. The men were sniggering at her, there was no other phrase for it.

“Perhaps a fig leaf,” suggested Arthur. 


	2. In which Miss Wodehouse does not have a good time at Almack's

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A request from POGA, from Chapter 11: "I wonder if one day we can get a peek into what a young debutante thinks of the (second) Duchess of W and Lady Stornoway - maybe one or two year's into Lizzy's marriage, when her influence is set? Or maybe two young debutantes - one who approves, and one who decidedly does not. (It's my shameless request of the day)."

Miss Wodehouse was not enjoying her time in London.

She had gone with every expectation of pleasure, at being treated with as much if not more deference as she received in Highbury, which she had not seen as a very outrageous expectation, but here she was, at Almack’s, a nobody without a partner, waiting for her sister’s assistance. Emma had not needed anyone’s assistance since she left the schoolroom and took over the running of the household. And never in her life had she ever felt quite so out of place, so awkward, so wanting. At least there was Harriet.

Harriet stared wide-eyed at all the dancers, at all the elegant ladies in their gleaming silks, all the men in dark tailcoats and said, in a quivering voice, “Oh Miss Wodehouse, I am sure I ought to have remained in Highbury! The company is too elegant for me.”

“Now, you must not be afraid,” said Emma, to Harriet, “you are prettier than half the women here, and with a sweeter temprament, I daresay. As soon as my sister returns, you shall see how sought after your hand will be.”

“Not as much as yours, Miss Wodehouse,” said Harriet.

Emma smiled. “Oh I shall be satisfied if I have a dance or two, but you know, I have no plans on making a great match myself. My mark declares its impossibility. But you Harriet– I know your mark means you are the soulmate of some great duke or prince.”

Harriet was not paying attention; she clutched Emma’s arm and said, “Oh Miss Wodehouse, surely that is the Duchess of Wellington!”

She was not inclined to like the second Duchess of Wellington, just based on this, and on rumors she had heard from her sister, Isabella, and brother-in-law, John, about the Duke of Wellington’s divorce. It did not sit with Emma’s notions of right for someone who had had a true match to marry a second time, to someone obviously  _not_  their soulmate. The poor Duke of Wellington, tricked the first time, and then knowingly giving up, and marrying someone not his match the second! Emma could not help but feel there was some mismanagement in the whole affair. If only she had been in London then! She would have found the Duke of Wellington’s soulmate. (Emma did then recall that Wellington had also mysteriously and tragically lost his soulmate– it seemed ever newspaper reporter in London had caught the first Duchess confiding this to the novelist Maria Edgeworth– but this did not shake her unthinking conviction that as she had not had made the match, it was not a good one.)

The Duchess of Wellington was a slight, pretty creature, smiling and lively, dressed in green silk brocade. At her wrist and ears were emeralds and pearls, and at her side was an elegant brunette Emma recognized as Lady Stornoway. Isabella had pointed out Lady Stornoway at Pall Mall yesterday and Harriet had nearly swooned.

“Oh she is so lovely,” sighed Harriet.

“I suppose,” said Emma, grudgingly. “Oh here is Isabella.”

Isabella, flustered and flushed said, “Oh! There they are. Emma, hold a moment, you must absolutely make the acquaintance of Lady Wellington and Lady Stornoway as soon as you can.”

“What? They are hardly the patronesses of Almack’s.”

“No, but you shall get nowhere without them,” said Isabella, fretfully. “Especially since we are Whigs. They are the heart of the party. Oh dear, I wonder if I should have left home this evening; both boys had a cough and I–”

“They are looking at you, Mrs. Knightly,” whispered Harriet, close on fainting.

“Please understand that John’s career depends on their goodwill,” whispered Isabella, and then turned to curtsey. The two ladies smilingly inclined their heads, and Isabella took this as permission to eagerly approach. “Lady Wellington, Lady Stornoway! What a pleasure! May I introduce you to my younger sister, Miss Wodehouse, and her companion, Miss Smith?”

“Charmed,” said Lady Stornoway, sinking into an elegant curtsey.

Lady Wellington curtsied likewise but turned to Isabella and said, “Is your husband with you, Mrs. Knightley? His Grace has bade me to be on a lookout for him.”

“He is somewhere about here– oh there he is!” John came up, looking rather out of temper to be forced to Almack’s, and, rather typically, seemed cheered at the notion he might not have to dance and enjoy himself but talk business instead. The Duke of Wellington then rather suddenly appeared at his wife’s side; she seemed to have summoned him by force of will alone. Lady Wellington turned to her husband with a degree of warmth and delight Emma thought vulgar, saying, “Arthur! There you are. See, I have found Mr. Knightley for you.”

The Duke of Wellington smiled down at the Duchess, his expression fond. “You really are the best of my generals. I have only to mention what I need for it to be found.”

“Oh, you make me out to be a quartermaster rather than a general,” said Lady Wellington, laughing. “But I grow distracted. Before you go and discuss business, may I present to you Mrs. Knightley’s sister, Miss… Wodehouse, was it? And Miss Smith.”

Emma curtsied very properly. After a moment, she subtly tugged on Harriet’s elbow, so that she paid the proper degree of deference to the Duke.

The orchestra began to tune.

“Knightly,” said the Duke of Wellington, rising from his bow, “I would speak with you, but first–” Emma was preparing herself to properly thank the Duke of Wellington for the offer to dance, she would be very much obliged, when she heard, to her shock: “–first I really must steal my wife away. Lady Jersey means to open with a waltz. Will you be at liberty after the set?”

John agreed to this. Emma was offended, not merely because she had assumed she would be opening the ball with the Duke of Wellington, and was embarrassed by both the assumption and her lack of partner, but because even in Highbury they knew one was not supposed to dance with one’s spouse. The purpose of dancing was to socialize with those one did not see every day. But Lady Wellington, whom Emma was fast deciding had manners too easy, too open for a woman of so high a position, took her husband’s arm and went cheerfully off, talking brightly and beaming up at him all the while.

Lady Stornoway, whose manners more matched to Emma’s ideas of the proper behavior of a lady, said, “Oh, I wonder what Lady Jersey can be thinking, opening with a waltz? I really cannot think it right for any debutante to dance it–” Emma’s heart fell again “–half the girls here will have to sit out.” She turned smiling to Emma and said, kindly, “I am sorry for it, but perhaps we might find you two partners for the quadrille after that? There is the Countess Lieven. She will be best able to assist.”

Emma was somewhat mollified by this, but when she and Harriet were home again, discussing the ball, and Harriet said, “Oh! I liked Lady Wellington so much! she is so very pretty,” Emma said, coolly, “Oh, she is tolerable I suppose.”


	3. In which Princess Victoria dines at Longborn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anon on tumblr asked: "I saw the second season of Victoria and the only thing I thought every time I saw Wellington was: Oke, but where is Elizabeth? Everyone knows if you want to controle politics you need the dutchess of Wellington, lady Marjorie and the Russian princess. (So thanks for that ;) lol) and now I have a need to see what Queen/Princess Victoria thought about the Wellingtons and how they operated in that time (oke I need to know EVERYTHING about there life but I'll be happy with just this) <3for the story."
> 
> Warning that I do not know a hell of a lot about Queen Victoria, I regret to say, and as ITV Victoria isn’t on Netflix, I haven’t watched it, so this little snippet is based on some wikipedia research and my memories of 'The Young Victoria.'

In 1830, when Victoria was eleven, and had realized just how lonely and melancholy her childhood really was, her mother and that horrible man, Sir John Conroy, took her on a tour of the centre of England, towards Malvern Hills. In Hertfordshire the wheel of the carriage broke. Victoria’s mother was very upset and said some very mean things in German about the coachman.

“I’ll handle this,” said Sir John, curtly. “Come now, get down out of the coach. Here is a coaching inn; I shall bespeak you a private parlor.”

Victoria did not mind. She was tired of being in the carriage and her King Charles spaniel, Dash, needed a chance to run about. He had been so dreadfully confined.

Before too long, Sir John discovered that the wheel could not be fixed that day. Victoria’s mother categorically refused to remain in the inn. Sir John asked the innkeeper who the principal family in the area happened to be.

“That would be the Bennets, sir,” he replied. “Mr. Bennet of Longbourn is the principal landowner about these parts and his second daughter is the Duchess of Wellington. The Duke and the Duchess are staying with them presently.” The innkeeper puffed up with pride and gesturing at the chair said, “His Grace the Duke of Wellington was so good as to sit in _that very chair_ just two days past, and had a cup of tea with his eldest daughter while waiting for the Duchess. She bought ribbon at the drapers--”

“Wonderful,” interrupted Sir John. “Will you have a message sent to His Grace, the Duke of Wellington, Prime Minister of England, alerting him that the heir apparent to the British throne is stranded in a coaching inn?”

The innkeeper did so, and with surprising speed, the Duke and Duchess of Wellington arrived.

Victoria at first thought that it was a member of her own party, for Sir John and Victoria’s mother had left to go settle with the coachman, and her governess had gone to use the facilities, but in strode a man whose profile she had seen all over England. His hair was white, which made him look rather like the marble busts of him decorating so many great houses, but his eyes were very bright blue, and he walked with the energy and perfect posture of a man twenty years younger. Victoria liked his blue coat. She liked too, that he turned and held the door open for a pretty woman in a mulberry colored spencer, and a pretty gown of printed muslin. The woman was about the same age as Victora’s mother, and though her dark curls were streaked with gray, she seemed to Victoria to be expecting a child.

“There now, my dear,” said the Duke of Wellington, immediately commandeering a chair, “sit down, will you?”

His attitude towards her was very tender, which Victoria would not have expected of a man renowned for being England’s greatest soldier.

“I am perfectly fine,” said the Duchess, a little exasperated. “Really, you act as if I haven’t given you two perfectly healthy girls. I have been through this before without much trouble.”

He touched her cheek, lightly and lovingly. “Yes, my dear, roughly eleven years ago. We were both considerably younger then--”

“Ah yes! This--” putting a hand to the swell of her abdomen “--certainly proves we are half-dead as is. Passion gone, bodies decrepit and hideous to the sight--”

Victoria had been sitting on the floor, playing with Dash, and hopped to her feet, before they said anything else embarrassing. “Hello! I am the Princess Alexandrina Victoria.”

The Wellingtons turned to her. The Duke bowed, clicking his heels together, in a military way, and the Duchess curtsied.

“Hello,” the Duchess said, with a lovely, warm smile, “I am the Duchess of Wellington. This is the Duke. We are very pleased to meet you! Indeed, we have long wondered when we might have the pleasure of making your acquaintance.”

“Mama does not like me to go out,” said Victoria. “Indeed, she does not like me to be alone. She would be very cross to know my governess was in the head when you arrived.”

The Wellingtons looked at each other, the Duke with a raised eyebrow.

“I hear you have had a spot of trouble with your carriage,” said the Duke, a little abruptly. “Never fear, we have come to take you back to the Duchess’s family. Longbourn is a very comfortable house.”

“Yes, and our youngest-- next youngest,” the Duchess corrected herself, resting her hand on her stomach again, “is your age. She loves dogs too. What is yours called?”

“This is Dash,” said Victoria.

To her surprise, the Duke of Wellington knelt and put his hand out for Dash to smell. Dash came over, tail wagging. “Fine fellow,” said the Duke, approvingly. “Our Margot goes for greyhounds.”

Victoria’s governess, the Baroness Lehzen, came in then, very flustered, and the Duchess of Wellington smilingly assured her that all was well, and that Lady Beatrice Wellesley and Lady Marjorie Wellesley were very excited to make the acquaintance of the Princess Victoria.

Though Victoria had always heard tell of the Duke of Wellington as the most commanding person in England, it was the Duchess who seemed to be directing the movements of everyone present. She laughed and smiled and somehow got them all into the carriage and back to Longbourn very quickly. Longbourn was not a grand house, but it was a very comfortable, cheerful place, and though the Duchess’s parents were very old, they were kind. And, best of all, there were two girls there, in white muslin and blue sashes. The oldest girl was not really girl, but a proper young lady, very cool and prim. Lehzen muttered in German that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. The younger girl was Victoria’s age, and Victoria liked her immediately, for as soon as  they were all introduced the adults went to sit at a table to take tea, she grabbed Victoria by the hands and said, “Oh famous! Mama said you were coming! What games do you like? Beatrice is turned fourteen and does not like to play.”

Lady Beatrice turned up her very patrician nose at that and said, “Hmph. I’m sure a princess does not like to play _games_.”

Victoria did not know if she liked games or not, for she had never played with other children. She petted Dash to make herself feel better. “I like to play with dolls,” ventured Victoria. “And I like to draw.”

Lady Marjorie chirped, “I like to draw, and play with dolls too, but I like shuttlecock best of all.”

“What is shuttlecock?”

“See, Margot?” asked Lady Beatrice, looking prim. “Princesses and proper ladies do not play shuttlecock.”

“I had no one to play it with,” said Victoria, a little helplessly. “I don’t know what it is.”

“Oh, then we shall teach you! It is the best. Mama used to play with me, but she--” lowering her voice confidentially “--is expecting a _baby_. It was an accident. She did not mean to have another because Papa is Prime Minister and Mama has so much to do because of it. She is very old to be having a baby, so she is not supposed to jump or run or anything, so Papa plays with me sometime, but he is even busier than Mama, and Arthur is at Trinity College in Cambridge, and Charles is on his Grand Tour, so there is really no one but my cousins, and none of them are in Hertfordshire. Come on! I shall show you.”

“Vhere are you going?” asked Victoria’s mother.

“Out to play,” said Victoria, setting her jaw.

“Just shuttlecock on the lawn,” said Lady Marjorie, looking pretty and guileless.

“Stay close to the house,” said the Duchess of Wellington, “so that the Duchess of Kent can see Princess from the windows.”

“And Lehzen goes vith you,” said Victoria’s mother.

“Yes Mama!” chirpped Lady Marjorie, and pulled Victoria outside. Lehzen quickly finished her tea and followed.

Lady Marjorie reminded Victora of a sparrow. She was brown, with bright dark eyes, and dark ringlets that bounced everywhere. She was constantly chattering, and laughing and singing. Victoria loved it. Home was so quiet, so still. Lady Marjorie was nothing like that. She taught Victoria how to play shuttlecock, which was very easy, and involved running, which Victoria usually wasn’t allowed to do. But Lehzen loved Victoria more than she loved Victoria’s mother, so she concerned herself with taking care of Dash, and pretended not to see it.

“I am named Marjorie, after my godmother, but because I was born in France, just before Mama and Papa left, everyone calls me Margot,” said the Lady Marjorie, when they were finished and sitting spread-legged on the lawn, sweaty and disheveled. “You can call me Margot. Pray, what should I call you?”

“Victoria.”

“That is a pretty name! Is it after your godmother?”

“No, my mother.”

“Mama and Papa are naming the next one after Mama,” said Margot, confidentially. “So there will be _two_ Elizabeth Wellesleys, but Papa’s name is Arthur and my eldest brother is Arthur as well, so there are two Arthur Wellesleys already. I suppose it is only fair.”

“Girls,” said the Duchess of Wellington, opening one of the French doors leading to the lawn, “come in and wash up for dinner, please.”

They got up and ran in. The men had already gone up; the ladies were waiting for them.

Lady Beatrice wrinkled her nose at the sight of the two of them. “Really, you are letting them dine at table, Mama?”

“Are we sitting at table?” asked Margot, delighted.

The Duchess laughed. Victoria had never met a Duchess who was this merry. “Why yes, if you promise to embarrass poor Beatrice too much. She is such a fine lady these days, finer even than her mother!”

Lady Beatrice looked as if she was embarrassed by them already.

“You can come and change in my room, with me and Beatrice,” said Margot, to Victoria. “Oh! And you can sleep with us, too, we shall have a party!”

“She vill sleep vith me,” said Victoria’s mother, immediately.

Lady Beatrice snorted.

“Beatrice,” said the Duchess, warningly.

“I beg your pardon,” said Lady Beatrice, voice quivering with laughter, “but she-- Mama, she is _Margot’s_ age, and she still sleeps with her mother?”

“That is not kind Beatrice,” said the Duchess.

“Yes, I am sorry,” said Lady Beatrice, struggling to sound contrite.

“Princess Alexandrina Victoria’s father was the Duke of Kent,” said Victoria’s mother. “Ve must be careful of her safety.”

Margot turned to Victoria’s mother and said, “Beatrice and I have a Duke for a Papa too, Your Grace, so it is alright. And we do not snore and we have the _nicest_ room, and we left the greyhound in London, so Dash can sleep on the bed with us too. And Papa always comes in and reads to us before bed, but if you think maybe he shouldn’t because he is Prime Minister and your daughter shall be Queen, Mama can come in, and she does _much_ better voices.”

This sounded lovely.

“Alexandrina Victoria alvays sleeps vith me,” she replied, frostily.

“Well I am sure Your Grace has her reasons,” said Mrs. Bennet, “but really, my granddaughters have a most comfortable room. Usually my eldest grandchild, Jenny Bingley, is with them as well, but the Bingleys are gone abroad for the summer, to Italy. There is plenty of room.”

“She vill sleep vith me,” repeated the Duchess.

Victoria contemplated having a fit, but the Duchess of Wellington caught Victoria’s eye and smiled at her reassuringly.

“Your Grace,” said the Duchess, kindly, warmly, “might we speak a moment?” She drew Victoria’s mother to the side, and at the end of of five minutes, Victoria’s mother came back and said, reluctantly, “Vell, maybe this vonce. If you are vith the Duke of Wellington’s daughters, you cannot get in much trouble. Hold Lehzen’s hand as you go up the stairs.”

“I can just tell,” said Margot, pulling Victoria out of the room, “we are going to have the best time!”

Victoria was delighted. “I can tell,” she said, one hand in Lehzen’s and one in Margot’s, “we are going to be best friends.”


	4. In which Mrs. Bennet is Speechless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From Kristen B in Chapter 11: "I know that Lizzy would be dreading her parents' reaction to learning that she is to become the new Duchess of Wellington, but every time I picture Mrs Bennet finding this out, I start giggling. She'll be beyond distracted! She'll sit there and fizz and pop and suddenly explode in all directions and, to make sure that all of Meryton Knows That Her Daughter Is To Be A Duchess, she'll invent the billboard several decades early. No worries about dying in a ditch for anyone anymore! Woohoo! I CANNOT WAIT."

"Congratulations, my dear. Your daughter has managed to acquire a Duke."

Mrs. Bennet was very startled by this; then seeing Mr. Bennet was reading his letters over his breakfast exclaimed, "Oh Lydia! Surely you have heard from Lydia and she is married to a Chinese duke. Do they have dukes in China? Mary, I am sure you know what they are called."

Mary did not, and was about to embark on a very long digression on the differences between Coptic and Cantonese when Mr. Bennet interrupted, "It is not Lydia of whom I speak, but Lizzy."

"Oh, Mr. Bennet, I wish you would not repeat such dreadful things, when we know that Lizzy is not the sort of girl these horrible newspaper men make her out to be!"

"You mean the embodiment of British female delicacy? Aye, that is true enough. But give her a powder keg and she will quickly prove them wrong."

"No, no, Mr. Bennet, you must know I mean all this talk about her being mistress to the Duke of Wellington! Even all the reports of her being his fiance are, to my mind, a very cruel thing for all these strangers to say about our Lizzy. She was married to her true match! She is not the sort of girl to forget that. I wish I had never heard Lizzy was a favorite of His Grace. Indeed, if I knew back when Lizzy was first in Lisbon, all that I know now, I would caution her to be very careful of allowing herself to be so singled out."

"I am sorry to hear that my dear, for here Lizzy writes that she is engaged to the Duke of Wellington after all."

"Oh Mr. Bennet, I wish you would not tease me so when my nerves are all to shreds from not hearing from Lydia--"

"Do turn your mind back to the letter we did receive, Mrs. Bennet. I know it is less interesting for its existing in reality and depriving us of the great joy in speculating as to its contents. Lizzy writes that now she is a month out of mourning, she is engaged to be married, and to the Duke of Wellington. Well, well. He makes quick work of it, but I suppose it takes a bold man to think he can defeat Napoleon. Does it take equal or lesser or greater boldness to see a woman convinced she has lost the only person she will ever love enough to marry and decide, 'yes, that's the person I shall have as my second wife'?"

"Oh Mr. Bennet, I told you I shall hear nothing more on this! You take delight in vexing me."

"I cannot deny that, but I cannot also deny the fact that our daughter will be a Duchess in roughly four weeks."

Kitty broke in, "She has written to me too, to say so! That cannot be right."

"That is your humor in her," says Mrs. Bennet to Mr. Bennet. "I think it is in very poor taste she has turned it into a joke. It would be better for her to say nothing at all and be above such undignified remarks."

Mary intervened, "She would not be so unserious in her correspondence with me, Mama, for Lizzy knows I do not hold with joking of that kind; and yet she has written to me that she is engaged to the Duke of Wellington."

Mrs. Bennet sat as one stunned. It was at that point she realized that she herself had a letter from Lizzy and opened it and read it with scant understanding. For some minutes she stared at the letter in utter incredulity, wondering if she had somehow hit her head or suddenly lost the ability to comprehend English. Her daughter, her  _Lizzy_  had married such a one as the Duke of Wellington? She opened her mouth, but no sound emerged.

"Well," said Mr. Bennet, tossing aside his own letter. "This may be the first time these twenty years and more that I have seen  _you_  at a loss for words Mrs. Bennet. I-- Mrs. Bennet?"

"I think Mama has fainted," said Kitty, worriedly.

Actually unsure if his wife was being dramatic or had actually fainted, Mr. Bennet contemplated rising, decided it was not worth the effort. "Hm. I am inclined to send my blessing to Lizzy by special messenger, if the mere fact of her engagement has already resulted in such an unexpected benefit."


	5. In which there is fake academic rambling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kittyknowsthings asked on tumblr: I would love to see what one day historians are going to make of #forgodssakeyourgrace

Introduction to  _Beau Wellesley and the Widow Fitz: Early Letters Between the Duke and Duchess of Wellington_ by Fakey McGee, PhD (Made U.P.,  2017).

Though Arthur Wellseley, first Duke of Wellington, left behind so much correspondence one biographer has credited him with a “compulsive urge” to answer all letters, the letters in this volume have never before been published. One may well wonder why. The Duke of Wellington’s name cannot be avoided in any work touching upon the first half of the nineteenth century, and his dispatches were printed almost as soon as they were issued. Even putting aside her own socio-political contributions, the Duchess of Wellington’s letters to her father, Mr. Bennet, are one of the most useful primary sources of the period spanning from 1812 to Mr. Bennet’s death in 1844. How could anything written by two such documented people, with such public facing lives, and such meticulously studied correspondence, fail to to be known by historians?

The answer perhaps can be explained by the context in which they were discovered.

In April of 2015, a team of conservators were brought into Apsley House Museum to repair a Regency era traveling writing desk believed to have belonged to Elizabeth Bennet Fitzwilliam Wellesley, the second Duchess of Wellington, in preparation for a new display in conjunction with the two hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. The conservators, the Wellesley family, and the staff at Apsley House Museum were surprised to discover not merely a false bottom in the main drawer, but a lock of white hair DNA tests have proved belonged to the first Duke, and a bundle of letters tied up with black hair ribbon of roughly Victorian origin. It was therefore the opinion of the curatorial staff of Apsley House that Elizabeth Wellesley (hereafter referred to as Lady Wellington) had bundled up the letters and hidden them around the time of Wellington’s death in 1852.

When one reads the letters, it is not difficult to see why. The period of national mourning attending Wellington’s funeral had eclipsed any resentments the public felt about Wellington’s divorce and troubled tenure as Prime Minister (c.1828-1834) and he had become the Hero of Waterloo once more; multiple biographies, authorized and not, were then published about the great man attributing to him every possible virtue; and Lady Marjorie "Margot" Wellseley, Lady Wellington’s second daughter, was a lady-in-waiting at Victoria’s court. The more moralistic tone of the later half of the nineteenth century had eradicated the permissive attitudes  of the Regency, and Lady Wellington had been too long in politics, and had too many family members in public service to the nation, to risk any stain on her or her husband’s reputation.

And the letters she hid certainly do complicate our understanding of the traditional narrative associated with the Wellingtons, if not obliterating it entirely. The letters span a period of several months, from February to July 1816. Wellington is remarkably flirtatious from the first letter, descending into explicit mentions of physical consummation that would be extremely difficult to explain away. Lady Wellington’s letters are more to be noted for their witty observations on the London season in 1816 than any outright mention of an affair; but though she is the more cautious of the two, there is enough in them to make it clear to any dispassionate reader that she had been Wellington’s mistress for perhaps over half a year before accepting his proposal of marriage. In 1852 the knowledge that Lady Wellington had not only slept with her husband well before they became engaged, but well before she had finished her year of mourning for her first husband (whom both she and Wellington referred to as her soulmate in these letters) would have been scandalous in the extreme.

However, they are a necessary correction to our present understanding of the Wellingtons. The letters present a more fully realized portrait than the sentimental Victorian etching that had so firm a hold on the public imagination, and resulted in such horrors as the lamentable 1937 Hollywood film, “The Duke and the Widow,” a work better studied as propaganda to encourage young women to become army nurses on the eve of World War Two than as an accurate depiction of the Wellingtons.

These letters will, I hope, destroy the idea Lady Wellington was little more than pattern card of feminine virtue and delicacy, until the Duke taught her to be witty (an image of herself Lady Wellington ridicules in these letters as “St. Lizzy of the Muddy Petticoats, a Creature that bears no resemblance to me, according to all my friends, from Mayfair to Hampstead Heath to France, and no resemblance to any possible human, according to me.”) We have instead a young woman of twenty-four, engaging in behavior she herself characterizes as “wickedly improper” while admitting she is frustrated to be without physical intimacy, and cannot bear to give up her lover. We have a society lady as interested in medical receipts as the cut of a new gown, who is devoted to her friends (particularly Lady Stornoway, better known as the Countess of Matlock) and deeply concerned about the opinions and comfort of all those about her, while still occasionally sharpening her wit on those very same people. We have a woman teasingly asking her “Beau Wellesley” if she pleased him and dwelling on her attraction to him, while still deeply grieving the loss of “a most beloved soulmate” in her first husband, Colonel Fitzwilliam.

I hope, too, these letters will finally kill the image of Wellington as a tormented soul suffering the pangs of star-crossed love, while nobly adhering to his duty, a characterization Wellington is said to have found irritating by people as varied as his nephew and aide-de-campe Lord Fitzroy Somerset; Lady Wellington’s closest friend and sister-in-law Marjorie Spencer Fitzwilliam, the --th Countess of Matlock; and salonniere and author, Madame de Stael. In these letters Wellington is by turns cheerful, excited, and passionate (though often annoyed by his army, his ex-wife, the political situation at home and abroad, the education of his sons, and how infrequently he could visit his mistress). Interestingly, there is no mention of Wellington’s dead soulmate, except for an oblique reference to January being as depressing a month for Wellington as June was for the future Lady Wellington. Wellington prefers to dwell on his present happiness instead of his past loss. I find it telling that his last letter, written after his engagement to the “Widow Fitz” was announced in  _The Times_ , ends, “my Sweet Girl, I cannot put to Paper all my present happiness. I never knew what Love was ‘til you.”  
  
And so too, I posit, we never knew what and who the Wellingtons were until these letters. 


	6. In which there is a very handwaved modern take

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anon on tumblr asked, in conjunction with a sequel meme floating about, "Not a sequel per se but would you do a modern day take on ‘Dalliance with the Duke’?" So here's a very handwaved version of that. What war has just happened? What bill has just been passed? Who knows! (Also Lizzy's ambiguously Anglo-Asian here, as I figured that was an adequate modern way to signal the visible social/ class distinctions that don't ultimately matter in canon.)

Elizabeth sat on the staircase, feeling a strange, growing sense of misery as she watched Jane put her coat on to go. “So sorry Lizzy,” said Jane, wrapping her scarf around her throat, “Charlie and I could only get the sitter until nine— but you’ll be alright?”

Forcing a smile, she said, “Yes, thanks for pulling me away, before I said anymore than I already did to Lady Catherine. I’ll probably just sober up a bit and then take a Xanax and go to sleep.”

Jane came over and hugged Elizabeth tightly. Elizabeth buried her nose in the hood of Jane’s parka. It smelled of the cheap, sandalwood soap their mother had always taught them to pack in their closets and trunks, and made Elizabeth’s eyes blur with tears over the memory of a time when life was uncomplicated and understandable, and Jane could make any horrible thing go away. “I love you Lizzy,” said Jane. “You’ll get through this.”

Elizabeth pulled away from her and nodded, carefully wiping away any smudges of eyeliner (at least her mascara was waterproof) with the base of her thumb. “I’ll be fine. Go on, don’t keep Charlie waiting in this cold. It was really good of you to come to this... feels odd to call it a victory party, but I suppose it is.”

When Jane left, Elizabeth remained on the steps, staring into the half-inch of scotch and soda and mostly melted ice in her glass. Her hands felt cold. She glanced up and couldn’t help but be transfixed at the picture on the hall table, of herself and Richard. It was one of her favorite of the wedding photos. Richard was sitting, handsome in his full dress uniform, looking up at her in smiling surprise. Elizabeth was clearly laughing, pulling him up out of his chair, the long train of her white satin wedding gown curled about her legs, the light gossamer of her veil almost a living thing as it swirled about her long dark hair.

Now she sat, defeated, in the black Alexander McQueen dress Marjorie had bought her to wear for the debate, her dark hair in professionally styled waves under a black fascinator (also supplied by Marjorie). There was a sort of veil attached to it, which Elizabeth liked. It made her feel like a 40s movie star, playacting a role, which was far preferable to the reality of being widowed before thirty.

She stared fixedly at her and her husband’s photo, in the hopes that if she did not blink her watering eyes, she would not cry. She was not sure if she was more upset over seeing her husband, as he had been, half-turned to smile up at her, or at the portrait of how she had been.

It seemed years since she had been so simply, so uncomplicatedly happy; the bright young thing in white satin seemed an entirely different person, a stranger, even.

“You alright there?” came a familiar voice.

She looked up; there was General Wellesley, looking rougishly handsome in an unbuttoned, well-tailored suit and loosened tie. She conquered the impulse to spring to her feet but couldn’t help but set down her drink and salute.

“At ease Captain Fitzwilliam,” he said, amused. “Though really, aren’t you at UCL now? You can hardly go through civilian life saluting to everyone.”

“I’m still an army nurse,” she protested, trying to quickly dash tears off her cheeks. “Though I’ve been promised no more active tours after....”

He leaned on the bannister and looked at her kindly. “Yes, I’ll make sure of that. And while you are in London, you really ought to investigate this wonderful new invention of ours called a handkerchief. I’m told this marvelous company called Kleenex even makes disposable ones.” General Wellesley had the strangely old-fashioned habit of carrying around a cambric handkerchief, and passed it over the banister to her.

Elizabeth waved it away, not wanting to get makeup all over it. Seeing she could not be joked out of her mood, he said, “Sometimes the cost of the battle only hits us after the victory.”

“It is Marjorie’s first major victory in the Commons,” said Elizabeth, sniffling a little. “I— it really is quite remarkable. It’s the first piece of meaningful post-Brexit legislation. She’ll replace Theresa May within the next two years at this rate. Finally have a competent female Prime Minister.”

General Wellesley observed her a moment and then said, in a tone of gentle command, “Come here, my dear.”

She acted on the tone before really parsing the words; she was enfolded in his arms before understanding his invitation.

Elizabeth was surprised at how good it felt; what comfort there was in being held by someone taller and stronger, at the feeling, however temporary, that she was safe and well-protected, guarded against the thousand slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. “Thank you.”

“Any time, my dear.”

She closed her eyes and rested her head on his shoulder. That was one benefit of the black Louboutins that formed a part of her usual costume of Tragic Widow; she finally managed to be a reasonable height. “God, I’m not fit for company now. I was just telling my sister Jane I ought to go home and take a Xanax once I’ve sobered up.”

“I don’t think you should sober up alone,” said General Wellesley, after a moment. “Have you got a sister living with you?”

“Oh, my sister Catherine. She’s taking her degree at King’s, but she went home for winter hols.”

“Why don’t you come back with me?”

“Netflix and chill?” Elizabeth asked, amused enough to smile.

He smiled roguishly at her. “If you like.”

Elizabeth felt cheered enough to laugh, and pulled back a little, placing her hands on the lapels of his suit jacket. It was blue and exquisitely well tailored. She had no doubt it was some outrageously expensive, bespoke Saville Row number, the kind Richard had always considered the only proper sort of suit. “I do wonder why it is you flirt with me quite so outrageously. You can see for yourself I’m not over my husband. That is— it does stand to reason. I only lost my soulmate seven months ago.” But then she recalled General Wellesley had lost his a year ago. She pulled his lapels straight and said to them, “Is this how you pulled yourself out of...?”

“Partly,” General Wellesley said, his arms still cozily about her. “I do it mostly for my own enjoyment.”

“Mostly?”

His look was eloquent enough to make her blush.

“Sir, I—”

“Sir? My dear, even if we were on base, you wouldn’t report to me—” He gently released her and said, “Look, my dear, I read the headlines. I flirt with you because you blush and flirt back so charmingly, but if I’m misreading this situation, tell me. It’s not my habit or my preference to coerce women based on the power differential—”

“You’re— you’re not,” Elizabeth blurted out, before flushing crimson. “It’s just— it’s complicated. I... God! Richard was my first and only, since we met when I was twenty and I wasn’t... I mean I dated before then, but once I met him I wasn’t interested in anyone else. I haven’t done this in years. And so much of me is still caught up in grieving.”

General Wellesley regarded her steadily, with a lip quirk of a smile.

Elizabeth felt a sudden and unexpected wave of desire sweep through her, disturbing the clawed grasp her grief had had upon her. “General,” she said, unsteadily.

His glance was warm and appreciative. “You can call me ‘Arthur.’ In fact, I’d prefer it.”

There was a warmth to his gaze that made Elizabeth feel both flustered and suddenly, achingly aware of how much she had missed being physically intimate with someone. She had not been married very long when she had been widowed; there had not been time for passion to cool, and only enough time for the general excited ignorance with which she’d first gone to the marriage bed to turn into a more thorough knowledge of what she liked and did not like.

“Arthur, I like you,” Elizabeth said, deciding to throw caution to the wind. Who would it harm? She was widowed, he was divorced and his children were with their mother currently— they were both consenting adults. “But, um— as I said, it’s been years. How do we...?”

She had been twisting her engagement ring about, staring at the sparkle of the diamonds, and felt a gentle touch of fingertips on her chin. General Wellesley— Arthur, Elizabeth corrected herself— tilted her face up. “Come back to mine,” he suggested, “and sober up. Once you do, we’ll go from there.”

Elizabeth stared up into his eyes, pulse hammering in her throat. She swallowed unsteadily and said, “Just a— one thing. I. um. I’ve terribly sensitive skin. If you wouldn’t mind shaving, if you mean to kiss me—”

He chuckled and released her. “I daresay I can manage that. Come on, let’s bid farewell to your in-laws.”

Elizabeth did so, in something of a daze. Marjorie held her tightly and said, “You alright? We can have the guest bedroom made up for you if you don’t want to go home. Julian’s promised the children brioche French toast for breakfast.”

“Tempting, but....” Elizabeth glanced over her shoulder at Arthur, who had kindly fetched her coat. “Arthur said he’d see me home.”

“Really?” asked Marjorie.

Elizabeth blushed.

“ _Well_ ,” said Marjorie, fighting a smile. “Well done, Lizzy. I’m glad you’re... feeling better, shall we say? Be safe, and text me when you eventually make it home.”

Elizabeth abandoned her fascinator on the hall table, wrapped her red and gold pashmina about her face, and allowed Arthur to help her on with her coat. She was not entirely sure if her conversation from that point on was coherent. She was stunned at her own audacity, and noted only that Arthur drove smoothly and well, through what little London traffic there was at this point in the evening. His apartment— in her own building, one owned by her father-in-law— was a nice one. It was one of those open floorplan things, with two bedrooms and a bathroom in the back, and no division between kitchen and living room. It had obviously come pre-furnished, and Arthur, a tidy man, did not leave very many signs of his presence about. Over an armchair he’d draped the ermine-trimmed red cape he’d worn to the Lords (Elizabeth always forgot he’d been given a Dukedom for winning a seemingly unwinnable war), on the table there was a laptop and a neat stack of files, and on the fridge he had some earnest but terrible drawings of superheroes done by his younger son. He hung up their coats and then put his suit jacket on the back of a chair, unbuttoning the sleeves of his shirt and rolling them up. Elizabeth noted that the ugly, very 90s armlet his ex-wife had gotten him as a wedding present had been replaced by a tasteful watch with a leather strap. It seemed much more _him_ than the armlet ever had.

Elizabeth settled on the couch, using her scarf as a wrap, and tucked her legs up under her.

“Tea?” Arthur offered. “I don’t keep anything stronger about the house.”

“I could kill for a cup of tea. Milk and two sugars please. I don’t want any more to drink, but you don’t keep _anything_ about the house? I always pegged you as a whiskey man.”

“I don’t drink,” said Arthur. At her look he said, “No, I simply dislike the feeling of being drunk. That and there are certain stereotypes about Irishmen I prefer to avoid.”

She had forgotten he was Irish; General Sir Arthur Wellesley, KGB, first Duke of Wellington, was, to her mind, emblematic of the British gentleman, the product of Eton (though he mentioned he’d been so poor a scholar he’d only been there a year) and Sandhurst, the sort to coolly adjust the cuffs of his Saville Row suit after walking away from an explosion, a la James Bond.

“When you’re back home, does your accent slip at all? Richard and I went with Darcy to Derbyshire once and you’d be shocked at how quickly his RP drifted northward.”  

“No, but then again, I haven’t spent any significant time in Dublin since I was a boy. Does Hertfordshire have much of an accent?”

“Too close to London for the original regional accent to survive,” said Elizabeth. “Sorry, odd tangent. My father’s a retired professor of linguistics.”

“I suppose you had your fill of _My Fair Lady_ as a child?”

“Oh God! I think I was named Elizabeth after Eliza Doolittle. In a moment of terrible rebellion at the age of six, I refused to answer to Eliza any more and insisted it was Lizzy or nothing. At sixteen I decided it was Elizabeth or nothing but it was too late. I was a Lizzy forever.”

Arthur snorted as he took the kettle off the stove. “Terribly rebellious, going from Eliza to Lizzy.”

“I’ve always been a good girl,” she admitted. “I’ll push a little against things that I personally don’t think make sense, but really, I wasn’t one for open rebellion. You’ll note that I’m the only one of my sisters to end up in medicine despite my mother’s preference that we all become doctors.” She took the mug offered, a little amused, but not surprised that Arthur, no gourmand, just offered her a mug with a teabag supplied by PG Tips. She’d been staying at Darcy’s too often, when she didn’t want to sleep at home— he was a die-hard tea snob. If it wasn’t a loose-leaf Mariage Freres, at _least,_ it was not worthy of being in his cupboard.

“My great rebellion was going for an army nurse instead of swotting away to be a proper doctor.”

“What a terrible disappointment. I'm surprised your mother survived.”

“Yes, shocking she rallied as she did. At least Mary’s gone for a doctor, even if it’s a D. Phil in Egyptology. Jane— dear, sweet Jane— is far more rebellious than the rest of us. She tried a term of pre-med, found it wasn’t for her, and became a primary school teacher.”

Arthur had been puttering around his kitchen and unearthed a slightly squished packet of Jaffa cakes, and a half-empty sleeve of chocolate digestives leftover, he mentioned, from the last weekend he’d had custody of his boys.

“Dare I ask how that’s going?” Elizabeth asked, dunking one into her mug.

He settled beside her and looked heavenward. “It’s going. If I didn’t know Kitty better, I’d assume our lawyers were drawing this renegotiation of custody out so as to charge us the largest fee possible. But she genuinely doesn’t understand half the legalese flung at her, and is paralyzed with anxiety over how unhappy Douro and Charles are. We haven’t the most amicable of relationships currently, but I don’t doubt she loves the boys and wants what’s best for them, but Tim—” this said darkly, as it was the name of his ex-wife’s second husband “—got an offer as a Tutor at Queen’s University, Belfast and Kitty can’t conceive of doing anything but going with him. How to balance this with the fact that the boys refuse to leave London is quite beyond her.” He put his arm across the back of the couch and glanced at her, to gauge if this was acceptable. Elizabeth, feeling daring, leaned back against his arm, which then drifted down to settle comfortably about her shoulders. “I shall be glad to see more of the boys, if I do get primary custody,” said Arthur, smiling a little. “I was deployed so often when they were babies, I missed all of the firsts.”

“Kitty didn’t come with you? There were army bases, surely.”

“Yes, but she remained in London.” He lightly ran his fingertips down her upper arm. “It ought to have been a sign. It’s a wonder we didn’t divorce sooner than we did.”

Elizabeth thought his obvious affairs were probably the greater sign, but felt this was perhaps not the subject she wished to pursue when her date— her... hook-up? Her friend with benefits?— had an arm about her shoulders. She said, “I always like a nature documentary when I’m feeling down. Do you mind?”

“Not at all.” Arthur switched on the TV and scrolled through Netflix until he’d located the latest effort by David Attenborough. Elizabeth tucked herself up against his side, feeling cozily well cared for. When they were about halfway through, and Elizabeth lulled into a state of comfortable relaxation, Arthur shifted and said, “By the by, my dear— what was that phrase you used?”

“Netflix and chill?”

“Yes— it can be literal, if that’s what you want.”

Elizabeth considered that and decided, no, that wasn’t what she wanted. “Just waiting to sober up,” she said, and passed him her now empty mug of tea, and the equally empty sleeve of chocolate digestives. “I’m feeling very sober now.”

“And...?”

“And....” She blushed and said, “I’d like— God! I don’t know how to go about this. How do we even start?”

Arthur smiled at her and rose, stretching. “I’ll go shave, for a start. By the by— should the evening get to a certain point— are you on the pill, or...?”

“I’m on the pill,” she said. “Um— hate to ask, but you’re... I know you get around a bit, but you’ve been tested for things?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Dear me, is that my reputation?  I’m clean. Tested last month, when I went in for my annual physical, and haven’t been with anyone since. I do have condoms.”

“Oh yes,” Elizabeth said with relief, “if you don’t mind using them, if we—”

“Not at all.”

While he was in the bathroom, Elizabeth dove for her purse and dug for a breath mint and then for her phone, for a quick check on her appearance. Elizabeth thought she would never be as beautiful as Jane, who was of the Chrissy Teigen and Olivia Munn school of mixed race beauty, and drew admiring stares when she walked down the street, but Elizabeth fancied she looked pretty enough. At the very least, she was performing femininity in a way that was unusual for her, or at least had been before she’d been drafted into politicking; for when she was out of scrubs or uniform, she certainly liked to be pretty, but she liked most to be able to move. She was seldom so polished as this. Put together, certainly. Nurses, as a species, liked to look approachable and competent. But Elizabeth was an army nurse who had seen several tours abroad; she never had a manicure that lasted more than a weekend , and she usually kept her engagement and wedding ring on the same chain as her dog tags. Today she had on both engagement and wedding ring, professionally cleaned and sparkling ostentatiously, on a French manicured finger, and decorously hidden her soulmark with an antique 18th century mourning bracelet of black jet. She’d put on a pair of the thigh-high black stockings she’d bought in bulk on Amazon (Elizabeth could not bring herself to wear pantyhose, which she had always hated since her mother first forced her to put them on for church; to wear pantyhose felt somehow like giving up herself entirely), to wear with the Louboutin heels Marjorie had given her and instructed her to learn to walk in for every speech and fancy dinner she’d had to attend. Elizabeth had gone to her usual hairdresser before events, Mrs. Pattinson, and had her hair curled and sprayed into a tidier, more glamorous version of its natural wave, instead of winding her hair back into a regulation bun and trusting it to remain imprisoned by a single black hair tie. Her usual routine of BB cream, mascara, eyeliner, and lip tint had been augmented by more products than Elizabeth thought ever found in a Sephora, and had been very expertly applied by Miss Duncan.

In an act of minor rebellion that wasn’t even really rebellion, she had put on her wedding lingerie, a white satin and lace corsety thing that bore the unlikely name of “torsolette” and a pair of lace appliqué pants that offered a comforting amount of shaping and coverage, instead of trusting to black Spanx as usual. Elizabeth wasn’t sure why she had done this. Perhaps only to make herself miserable over how much depression weight she’d put on since her wedding, as her cups were close to running over and she was sure she’d have red marks from the plastic boning all up and down her torso. Perhaps she had anticipated this, had subconsciously understood where all this flirtation with Arthur would lead.

This was an uncomfortable thought.

Elizabeth tried to distract herself with a scroll through Facebook. She took in nothing, and was starting unseeingly at Mary Crawford’s latest harp cover of a pop song, when she heard the bathroom door open. Elizabeth hastily switched her phone onto silent, dropped it into her purse, and tried to think of an alluring pose. She didn’t manage to achieve this before Arthur returned looking fit, and casually, damnably handsome with shirtsleeves rolled and tie loosened, and his hair, which was going slightly gray at the temples, waving back from his forehead in a way that made her ache to derange it.

Elizabeth somewhat embarrassedly recalled she had always had a thing for commanding older men, from her first sight of Captain von Trapp idly wielding his riding crop at the Baroness. (Damn Jane, for deciding the _Sound of Music w_ as her favorite movie. Elizabeth had lost track of how many times they’d watched it as children.) Her husband had been ten years older than her. It really oughn’t to have surprised Elizabeth that her first post-widowhood hook-up was with someone who so exactly fit her fantasies. All Arthur had to do was rip her clothes off, pin her down, and pound her into the mattress for it to be pulled straight from an often visited daydream.

Arthur took his seat again. He reached out and gently pushed a loose strand of hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear. His fingertips lingered in her hair, softly stroked it in reassurance.

There was a moment of palpable tension, and then he said, “May I kiss you, my dear?”

“Yes,” she said, and pulled him to her.


	7. In which the Prince Regent wears a burnous

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lordansketil asked, "I don't know if you still take requests... but I just saw and was reminded of Napoleon's fabulous red and gold travel cloak... could you write Arthur and Lizzie walking in on the Prince Regent trying it on? ^_^"
> 
> Here's the cloak in question: https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/61156/napoleons-cloak-burnous

February 1816.

 

For a change of pace, Wellington had taken Elizabeth riding in St. James’s Park. This put her in something of a melancholic mood. She did not like to mention that this was the place she had staged a meeting between her family and Colonel Fitzwilliam’s, for the first time, and when questioned, said only only that she was tired, and the cold made her more so.

Wellington amusedly took this as a compliment to his own prowess and made insincere noises about being sorry she had not slept much the night previous.

“I can tell you are in agonies of remorse,” Elizabeth said dryly. “Indeed, sir, I am sure you would be prostrate on the path, if Copenhagen did not separate you from it.”

“My lord Wellington!”

Elizabeth glanced over her shoulder. A man in a very elaborate colonel’s uniform was walking towards them, out of what appeared to be a private garden.

“Colonel McMahon,” said Wellington, reining in Copenhagen and raising his hat. “How d’ye do, sir?”

“Well, Your Grace, and I thank you,” said the Colonel.

“You know Mrs. Fitzwilliam?”

“I have not had that pleasure, no.”

Elizabeth inclined her head. “Sir.”

Colonel McMahon turned back to Wellington. “His Highness saw you riding in the park and wishes you to know you that you must not stand on ceremony. You must come and call on him any time you like.”

“He is awake now?” Wellington asked, rather surprised.

Colonel McMahon coughed into his gloved fist, which Elizabeth took to mean that His Highness had not yet been to bed.

“Have I time, in your estimation, to return Mrs. Fitzwilliam to her family?”

“His Highness was most insistent you come breakfast with him.”

Wellington glanced at Elizabeth and said, “Well, my dear, do you fancy a bit of a rest by a fire? You were just complaining of the cold. His Highness hates the cold even more than you do. His rooms are always infernally hot.”

“Is His Highness... in a proper state for me to see him?” Elizabeth asked, carefully. She did not know how else to ask, ‘Is the current sovereign of Great Britain so drunk at nine-thirty in the morning as to make it improper for a respectable widow to see him?’

“He is only a little elevated at present,” said Colonel McMahon. “You must not fear any, er, riotous display, Madame. It will not be the slightest bit improper.”

Elizabeth looked uncertain.

Wellington said, dryly, “You are aware that Mrs. Fitzwilliam is a _Fitzwilliam_? Her father-in-law is the Earl of Matlock. Whigs to a man, with very high notions of propriety.”

“If matters are too uncomfortable for the lady, I shall escort her home myself,” said Colonel McMahon. “But Your Grace, I really must entreat you to come to Carleton House at this moment; His Highness will be dreadfully hurt if you do not come.”

Wellington agreed and they rode through the gardens and dismounted. Colonel McMahon made a tentative offer to help Elizabeth dismount, but Wellington rather coolly stepped before him and put his hands to Elizabeth’s waist, and lifted her down as usual. Elizabeth raised her eyebrows at this display but said nothing. She was too flattered to protest, and then too stunned by the decor, when they were lead into an overheated and over-decorated parlor. She did not know what to look at first— the paintings, the furnishings, the carpets, the chandeliers, the ceiling frescos, the porcelain, etc.

When Colonel McMahon left, Elizabeth said, dubiously, “Really, Your Grace, I am not sure I ought to be here. I probably ought to have just gone back on my own, or waited in the garden until Colonel McMahon was at liberty.”

“The Prince Regent is harmless, my dear, whatever your father-in-law may think. Really, you are more likely to be amused than offended.”

“I shall judge as I find, you dreadful Tory,” Elizabeth said, tapping him lightly with her riding crop, which had the effect of making this statement slightly more flirtatious than she intended.

Wellington looked down at her with amusement, before flicking a bit of mud off her cheek with an affectionate, “Minx! Sometimes I forget what a Whig you are.”

Colonel McMahon returned, with several footmen and equerries, who announced the arrival of the Prince Regent.

Even before she had joined so Whiggish a household, Elizabeth had not had a very high opinion of the Prince Regent. The gossip she had gleaned herself, on top of the stories Marjorie had received from her aunt, the Duchess of Devonshire, had left Elizabeth with the impression that the Prince Regent was perhaps the silliest man in England.

Her first glimpse of him did nothing to disprove this first impression.

“My dear Lord Wellington,” the Prince Regent exclaimed, flouncing—no other verb rose to mind but that—over to them in a large, hooded cloak, embroidered around the hood and breast with silver thread and braid borders of trefoils, elaborate scrolls and arabesques. There was a sort of flap with tinsel tassels on the front, that was meant to button closed, like a uniform coat, but the Prince Regent had been unable to shut it.

Wellington, himself rather a beau, looked upon this sartorial display with faint bemusement.

“General Blücher gave it me,” said the Prince Regent, very proudly. “It is a burnous that _Napoleon himself_ had made after his Egyptian campaign.”

“Ha,” said Wellington.

“Rather a... scrawny fellow, Boney,” said the Prince Regent, essaying the front fastenings.

“Ha,” said Wellington, again.

It was such a useful monosyllable, thought Elizabeth, looking at him with amused affection. Perhaps Wellington had it in him to be a politician yet.

“Did you ever see Boney, my dear Duke?”

“I saw his back after General Blücher arrived at Waterloo,” said Wellington dryly.

The Prince Regent roared with laughter. “Well said, Your Grace, well said! But everywhere I see Bonaparte he is portrayed as such a little fellow. A very small man, I expect.” He gave up on closing the cloak and turned to Elizabeth. “And...?”

“May I introduce to you Mrs. Fitzwilliam, Your Highness?” asked Wellington.

Elizabeth dipped into a deep curtsey, trying not to let the long train of her riding habit slide off her forearm, where she had looped it.

“Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” the Prince Regent mused. “It is very familiar....”

“Colonel Fitzwilliam’s widow, sire,” murmured Colonel McMahon.

To Elizabeth’s utter incredulity, tears rose to the Prince Regent’s eyes and he said, in a choked voice, “Oh, dear lady! It was everything shocking— so very sad a tale— you know, your father-in-law has never been a friend of mine but when McMahon here read me his speech in the Lords— oh! I never felt such sorrow for a family in all my life. And you, dear lady! To lose your soulmate in such a fashion! I know it must of of some comfort that he died for the good of England, but it cannot be much.”

"No," agreed Elizabeth. "I still feel his loss very keenly."

“I myself,” said the Prince Regent, locating a silk handkerchief somewhere on his capacious person, “know _what it is_ to know one’s soulmate but be unfairly separated from them by force of circumstance. Ah, dear lady! My heart breaks for you, it truly does.”

Elizabeth glanced sideways at Wellington, to ask, ‘Is he sincere?’ to which Wellington made a gesture indicating that he was. Elizabeth was flummoxed. Like everyone, she had heard rumors that the Prince Regent, while a young man, had discovered his soulmate was the Catholic widow, Maria Fitzherbert, but the laws governing an English prince and an English citizen were vastly different. Had the Prince Regent been of any other rank of life, why, there would be no question of his marriage. If his soulmate was Maria Fitzherbert, then he ought to marry her.

But George III was from the house of Hanover, and still adhered to the continental notion of kingship, to wit: if one was a king, one married for dynastic and political reasons. He had introduced a very pointed bill ensuring that. It was the sacrifice a king of England must make, George III had said in his more lucid moments, in order to be respected by his cousins in Europe. And so the Prince Regent had married Caroline of Brunswick. (Whether or not he had married Maria Fitzherbert before was a source of ongoing tension. Even in so dignified a home as Matlock House, Elizabeth had seen (drunk) politicians come to blows over whether the king, as Head of the Church of England, had a responsibility to uphold the Church of England doctrine that the name on one’s wrist as one’s Perfect Godly Match, or whether, as Head of State, the king had a responsibility to sacrifice the personal to the political and marry as international politics dictated.)

Before Elizabeth was able to come up with any response, polite or no, she found herself being embraced and sobbed upon. The Prince Regent was a great deal softer than expected, for not only was his figure well padded, but his person was luxuriously attired in wondrously soft silk, under Napoleon’s cloak; but she was overwhelmed by the scent of hair pomade and what smelled to Elizabeth like several dozen perfumes, of which brandy was the predominant note. What did one do? Was a pat on the back and a soothing “there, there” expected, or permitted? Did one offer one’s handkerchief? Did one force tears oneself?

Elizabeth sneezed, which was not on her panicked list of appropriate responses.

“Poor woman,” said the Prince Regent, pulling away and dabbing at his tears with his handkerchief, “here I am keeping you from the fire after you have just been out in the cold.”

“Mrs. Fitz does particularly hate the cold,” said Wellington, who had very carefully positioned himself so as to pull Elizabeth away from the Prince Regent if the need arose.

Elizabeth glanced at him, a little startled. Wellington misinterpreted this as a request for an extraction from the situation. He took out his handkerchief and Elizabeth naturally went over to him to take it. Elizabeth applied the handkerchief to her flushed face. Wellington then realized he had referred to her by nickname before the Prince Regent.

He hastened to say, by way of explanation, “Did you know Mrs. Fitz is a veteran of my Spanish campaign, Your Highness? We are old friends, she and I, and I am glad of having the power of introducing her to you.”

“The two of you must breakfast with me,” the Prince Regent declared. “You must! You are looking terribly gaunt, Your Grace. You want fattening up.”

Elizabeth was hard put not to laugh at this. Wellington looked nonplussed. They were swept into a dining room, relieved of hats, gloves, and riding crops, and shown to a heavily overloaded table.

“Come sit here, dear lady,” said the Prince Regent. He gestured to a chair by him.

Elizabeth—like anyone with even a passing knowledge of the Prince Regent— was well aware of his rakish reputation, but she was equally aware that the Prince Regent had little in common with the rake who currently admired her. Where Wellington liked a pretty, witty brunette, with manners as elegant as her dress, the Prince Regent was well known for chasing after voluptuous, motherly older women, who had arrived at a plump middle age, or even grandmotherhood. Elizabeth had no particular fear for insult to her person, merely for her sense.

And the Prince Regent was certainly an assault to the senses. He loved anything luxurious, anything beautiful, and saw no reason why he should not merely possess but combine them all at once. Elizabeth watched in astonishment as the Prince Regent consumed for breakfast— a meal that for Elizabeth usually consisted of tea, toast, whatever fruit was in season, and perhaps a little bacon or cold ham— two pigeons and three beefsteaks, three parts of a bottle of Mozelle, a glass of dry Champagne, two glasses of Port and a glass of Brandy. All the while he enthused over this or that, mimicking the people who told him these things (with surprising accuracy), pausing only to wait for them to agree with him. Or possibly, thought Elizabeth, once again turning away the overanxious footman with the champagne bottle, the Prince Regent was waiting for them to praise him.

Elizabeth found she could not. All she could manage was to hide all lesser emotions but her incredulity. 

“Poor woman,” she heard the Prince Regent say in a stage whisper, when they rose to go. “Still so melancholic! Still so unused to society. She scarcely eats! When I am sad, I cannot take anything.”

‘Oh yes,’ thought Elizabeth. ‘You turn away everything but food.’

The Prince Regent drew Wellington aside and said in a stage whisper, “She’ll want someone to be kind to her, Your Grace. If I know women, she will want someone to be kind to her. Be on hand, will you? I am _sure_ she would be kindness itself in return.”

Elizabeth did not know whether or not to be embarrassed, and blushed in the interim.

“I really don’t understand why His Grace defends the Prince Regent,” said Elizabeth, later, as she and Marjorie sat sewing before the fire. “The Duke of Wellington never drinks. Even when he toasts, he just touches the glass to his lips. I witnessed the Prince of Regent drink enough to fell men of three times his size. Wellington is so... sensible a man. He is something more than intelligent— he is _clever_. And the Prince Regent is something less than intelligent, to put it mildly.”

Marjorie laughed but said, “Lizzy dear, the heart has its reasons.”

“What on earth can you mean?”

“I only mean that they are in sympathy with one another.”

“How can they be?”

“You don’t think,” said Marjorie, flicking her gaze up from her embroidery to study Elizabeth's face, “that two men, married very unhappily to women not their soulmates, who have been separated forever from those soulmates, and who found some measure of relief from this situation in the same manner might feel sympathy for each other? Wellington told us himself that the Prince Regent envied him his divorce.”

“You’re not going to get me to pity the Prince Regent,” said Elizabeth, tartly.

“I don’t mean to,” said Marjorie. “I dislike him myself. Horrible man, with horrible taste in mistresses. But one must often accept the presence of those one personally dislikes in one’s life, and particularly in one’s working relationships, if one wishes to get anywhere.”

Elizabeth looked heavenward. “What if I do not wish to go anywhere?”

“Then you’re a Tory,” said Marjorie.

Elizabeth faked a shudder. “Don’t say such dreadful things, Marjorie.”

“I am cruel only to be kind, my dear sister.”

Later that evening, her head resting on Wellington’s shoulder, Elizabeth said, “Sir?”

“Yes, my dear?”

“I suppose,” said Elizabeth, sourly, “the Prince Regent means well?”

“He usually does. It always comes off oddly. He wished to do me some service after all my service abroad—”

“The multiple titles of nobility were not enough, I suppose.”

“Acts of Parliament, my dear girl, acts of Parliament! And so the Prince Regent kindly gave me my hatrack.”

Elizabeth raised her head and turned to look at him. “Your hatrack?”

Wellington tucked an arm behind his head. “Yes, my dear. Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker. Done by Canova. The Prince Regent calls him Europe’s greatest living artist.”

Elizabeth let out an unladylike snort of laughter. “Was the fig leaf a later addition?”

“My own contribution to art,” said Wellington, modestly.

Elizabeth laughed, but the conversation with Marjorie kept drifting through her head.

“You worrying, Mrs. Fitz?” Wellington asked lazily, stroking her hair. “What about?”

“Not worrying,” she said, folding her hands on his chest and balancing her chin on top of them. “Thinking. You needn’t answer but were you... were you very unhappy, sir?”

“Was,” he said, letting her loose hair flow through his spread fingers. “It was a bad situation for all involved. Ned’s death....” He studied a curl that had managed to defy both hairbrush and braid. “I did not know death could hurt so much.”

“Oh, sir,” said Elizabeth, softly.

“And it made everything worse with Kitty, of course. I could not call myself happy, then.” He said, after a moment, “Unless one’s felt that particular pain, of having... known who one’s soulmate was, of having had the chance to spend part of one’s life with them, and then felt them torn from one by circumstance, by the demands of an insatiable and often unsatisfied and ungracious nation....”

“I know,” said Elizabeth.

He scrounged up a smile for her. “I know you do, my dear. That is part of the reason I pursued you as shamelessly as I did. I knew you would understand. I could say anything about it to you.” The smile turned to a smirk, which she knew at least to be sincere. “I am hardly unhappy just now.”

Though Elizabeth could not herself like the Prince Regent— it was always difficult for her to get over her first impressions— she could at least understand how someone she thought of so highly could, in turn, think highly of someone of whom she thought poorly. And, thought Elizabeth, the Prince Regent was right in one respect. Wellington spent the rest of the evening being kind to her, and Elizabeth was, in turn, kindness itself.


	8. In which Maman Pascal gets all the hot gossip

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Phyloxena, who asked for Mrs. Bennet and Maman Pascal meeting.

Summer 1816.

Elizabeth and Colonel Pascal spotted each other in the middle of the same fashionable warehouse near Gracechurch Street, something that ordinarily would be a source of great pleasure, but was instead one of great strain. They both had their mothers with them, and as Elizabeth and Colonel Pascal had automatically made their reverences to each other, the mothers swooped in, looking expectant.

"Ah, Mama," said Elizabeth, "this is my good friend Colonel Pascal. Colonel, this is my mother, Mrs. Bennet."

"And this is my mother," said Colonel Pascal, indicating a pretty woman with riotous gray curls, " _Madame Pascal. Maman-- c'est ma copine, Elisabeth, qui va devenir la nouvelle duchesse de Wellington. Je t'ai deja parle--_ "

" _Ah, oui_!" Madame Pascal looked with interest at Elizabeth, taking in her Parisian gown of flounced white cambric, and her stylishly cut red pelisse. In pleasantly accented English, she said, "I am enchanted to be making your acquaintance, yes? I think you were _la veuve Fitzwilliam_?"

"I am still, for three weeks more," said Elizabeth, smiling, but shooting an anxious look at Colonel Pascal.

Elizabeth did not know if there would be anything quite so awkward as having to explain to two particularly nosy mothers just how she and Colonel Pascal knew each other. Bad enough that Mrs. Bennet should know Colonel Pascal (and Colonel Pascal's look of strained displeasure seemed to indicate he thought it equally bad that his mother should know Elizabeth). But now there would be questions and awkward explanations and Mrs. Bennet no doubt saying something horribly offensive while really meaning to be progressive and polite.

"Yes, my poor girl," said Mrs. Bennet, patting Elizabeth's gloved hand. "So very tragic! Her husband-- or, I should say, her  _first_ husband-- Colonel Fitzwilliam died at Hugoumont."

"Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam?" Madame Pascal turned to her son with interest.

Colonel Pascal bent and spoke to his mother in a soft, rapid French, interspersed with a word or two Elizabeth did not know and assumed to be Hebrew.

"Ahh," said Madame Pascal. "You are family then, or nearly. You will come to tea!"

"Family?" asked Mrs. Bennet, not quite following. "What does Madame mean, Lizzy, that you are family?"

"Colonel Pascal was in the Coldstream Guards with Colonel Fitzwilliam," Elizabeth said, hastily. Colonel Fitzwilliam had not been ashamed of his predilictions, but had been catuious about whom he told about them. He had purposefully avoided telling Mrs. Bennet. "The, ah, the military family, Mama. It's a metaphor."

"We are in Bloomsbury," said Madame Pascal, helpfully.

Colonel Pascal said in some exasperation, " _Maman, on ne peut pas enlever deux femmes comme ca_ \--"

" _Eh! Et pourqoui pas_?" She rapped her son on the shoulder with her fan. " _Je suis ta mére! Tu dois m'obeyir! C'est le voeu du bon Dieu!_ "

"Quite," said Mrs. Bennet, who spoke not a word of French.

Both Elizabeth and Colonel Pascal found themselves quickly outmanouevered and ensconced in Madame Pascal's parlor in Bloomsbury, nibbling on pastries Elizabeth could not name but found delicious. Colonel Pascal looked as if he had a headache but was too polite to mention it. The conversation was carried entirely by Madame Pascal and Mrs. Bennet, who spent the first ten minutes boasting of their childrens' accomplishments, the next comparing largely imaginary illnesses and various treatments for them, and the last in a long and in-depth discussion of where they had seen the best bargains on muslin in what to Elizabeth's ear seemed to be every warehouse in London.

"Oh God," said Elizabeth, in horrified fascination. "They're  _friends_."

Colonel Pascal shuddered. "God preserve us."


	9. An Entry from Harriet Arbuthnot's Diary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harriet Arbuthnot, the Duke of Wellington's actual closest confidante, was not keeping a diary in 1817 but, then again, the Duke of Wellington never married Elizabeth Bennet, so hopefully this flub in history can be excused. Thanks for the idea for this, foramerryheart!

August 1817.

The Duke told me today, as the Duchess was at Mme de Stael’s, that he has at last realized why Mr. Darcy behaved so very oddly when the Duke was first trying to make the Duchess love him.

Offended propriety was my guess, for I know the Duke had interested himself in the Duchess well before her mourning was over, and Mr. D is a high stickler.

“Yes and no.”

I confessed to some curiosity, then, for the Duchess and Mr. D seemed on very excellent terms after the Duchess’s first husband died, and the Duchess does not talk of their falling out-– I daresay the Duchess only ever told the whole of it to the Viscountess Stornoway–- but as Mr. D had not come to the Duke and Duchess’s wedding it was clear the Duchess saw it as a reproach to her and was too angry to keep up the friendship until he apologized.  

I still recall how ridiculous everyone thought Mr. D and Lady C de B were being at the time. EVERYONE knew that the Viscountess Stornoway had been plotting the marriage since the Duke shewed his interest and the Duchess–- or the Widow Fitz, as she was then–- held him off so persistently, while still being so obviously bouleversé by him and his attentions. (She is a very GOOD sort of woman, with all that implies.) Heavens, Lord Matlock was so keen on the match even Caro Lamb picked up on it! If the Fitzwilliam notion of one true matches was not so strictly upheld in the major brach of the family, the auxiliary branches should not have complained, especially when they stood to gain so much by such a match.

The Duke said that was not quite the case, and did not think the Duchess would mind his saying that she and Mr. D had a “grand breeze” the day before the wedding, where Mr. D accused the Duke of being the worst kind of rake, and wishing to marry the Duchess because it was the only way to gain admittance to her bed. The Duchess obviously flew into the bows at this and attributed this accusation both to the Duke’s old reputation and to a childhood friend of Mr. D’s who had become a rake and ended up in Australia for debt.

The Duke said it was jealousy- he had known Mr. D to be jealous of him, and his success with the Duchess since January of ‘16. I could not hide my surprise at this. If Mr. D really had been in love with the Duchess he did a very good job of hiding it. The Duke then asked if I had seen the Times announcement that Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley was to be married to Lady ELIZABETH Villiers. 

I was v. v. shocked– cried that everyone know Colonel and Mrs. Fitzwilliam had been a true match!

The Duke said that they were, he knew this to be true, for he had obviously seen the Duchess’s mark, and he had called on her not an hour after her first husband died, and called on her frequently during her year of mourning. All that she felt and thought of, during that year of mourning, was what he had felt and thought following the loss of his soulmate. Mr. D had convinced himself into a misunderstanding.

I asked if he would he tell the Duchess of his suspicions, but the Duke thought not. She and Mr. D were only just now on good terms again, and Mr. D had clearly met his true match and gotten over such foolishness. Then the Duke laughed and said the Duchess probably would not believe him if he DID tell her of his theory. She had never picked up on the fact that Mr. D had liked her in '16. I teased the Duke that that had been because she had been too dazzled by HIS attentions and the Duke looked very smug about it and said again how fortunate he was to have secured the love of such a woman as the Duchess. He confessed to me that no one had ever loved him the way the Duchess does, and I think it clear that the Duke has never loved anyone as he does the Duchess. It is nice to see the Duke properly partnered at last. I only wish she could be brought to the Tories. With HER on our side, why, we should have control of the Commons within the year. 


End file.
